


The Patron Saint of Prickly Pears

by Nakimochiku



Category: The Walking Dead (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-21
Updated: 2014-11-21
Packaged: 2018-02-26 12:28:10
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2652065
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nakimochiku/pseuds/Nakimochiku
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Daryl is as hard to decipher as da Vinci's journals and a million other metaphors Glenn comes up with.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Patron Saint of Prickly Pears

Daryl is as hard to understand as indie films; the kinds with instagram filters and flashbacks and killer soundtracks. And just like indie films, Glenn likes Daryl reluctantly for aspects he doesn’t fully grasp, messages half gleaned from rewatching at four am with weed and a bag of cheetos.

"I miss cheetos." Glenn sighs out to no one in particular. They played this game regularly in the beginning, each session growing farther and fewer between as they came to understand all those things they missed, all those first world problems they used to hashtag on twitter, they were all gone.

"I miss celebrity gossip. All that trash." Maggie replies, scraping the bottom of a can of fruit cocktail to get the last of its syrup with her spoon. Really, Glenn thinks that means she misses worrying about someone else’s life, instead of her own. "I miss music."

"Why ya gotta miss that?" Daryl says as he passes by, crossbow slung over his shoulders, tying his bandana around his mouth. "We got our own lil pop star right there." He jerks his head in Beth’s direction, where she is humming softly, and carries on his way as though he never opened his mouth. He drapes his poncho over his shoulder, sticks a cigarette in his mouth. He’s getting thin on those, smoking them sparingly.

Glenn likes when Daryl's on his last cigarettes, likes the way his cheeks hollow as he sucks the smoke down, likes the way he closes his eyes and savours the rush and breathes out slow and easy through pursed lips. He sighs out every drag like it’s all he needs, and god forbid you ever tell him he’d probably be better off if he quit.

"Going hunting?" Glenn calls, moving to stand and follow. Daryl turns, gives him a short look, and nods. "You want company?" Daryl grunts and turns away to inspect the killer edges of his knife, leaning his head back to enjoy a long deep drag on his cigarette. It’s interesting that all his gestures have a language of their own, eloquent in the way none of his breath is wasted on the trappings of words.

"Well you heard the man." Maggie says widely, and grins. "He don’t really want your company, but if you’re gonna tag along anyway, you’d best not chatter too much." Glenn bumps her arm fondly. Daryl is waiting for him under the guise of finishing his cigarette, patient as a coiled snake while Glenn polishes off the last of his oatmeal and hurriedly grabs a sweater.

It’s brisk outside, the landscape a wash of dying colours growing dark with the cloudy sky. "Ya usin’ me as an escape since y’two called it quits?" Daryl asks brusquely, striding passed Glenn, tossing the butt of his cigarette in the grass.

Glenn blinks. "How’d you know we broke up?"

Daryl shrugs. There’s efficiency to that. He just knows: it’s just one of those things he can read on people, in the way they interact, observing the smallest gestures. Glenn supposes Daryl figures he wouldn’t quite understand his innate perception because he shrugs and drops it, since it ain’t his business to begin with.

"Yeah, I wanted to breathe for a bit. But there’s this thing friends do, perhaps you’ve heard of it." Daryl lifts a brow. "It’s called hanging out. Thought we'd try it, y’know? Maybe come back later and braid each other’s hair." Daryl snorts. Other friends might start roughhousing, might crack a joke back. There’s an economy to Daryl’s affections, an unflinching tightfistedness of his smiles and his touches, rare commodities that he withholds from the market until he graces someone with a palm to the chest for solidarity, a bump of the shoulder for humour. Glenn knows better than to initiate touches.

But that doesn’t stop his fingers from curling and itching as he longs to brush down a stray lock of hair sticking up ridiculously, lending Daryl a childlike air that doesn’t suit him. It’d be dangerous to touch, he knows, like a porcupine or--

"You remind me a bit of prickly pears."

"What now?" Glenn shrugs, decides not to elaborate, and somewhat disgruntled, Daryl gruffly readjusts his poncho and walks towards the gates. His metaphor is apt; Daryl has thick barbs, easily avoided spines that ward off anything with half a brain. And if a daring creature gets passed those, there are smaller barbs that peel away and catch in the throat.

Handle with care, Glenn thinks with dry humour.

"Fuck hunting, let’s go on a run. Got my back?" There’s no point asking. With Daryl, the answer is always yes.

They take a minivan with half a tank of gas, the one that still has Taylor Swift cds and candy wrappers shoved into the glove compartment. Glenn pops a cd in without looking at the cover. He misses music too, misses the noise of rush hour traffic and all the other pretentious crap he’d get from movie soundtracks.

"Ain’t no good music in that thing?" Daryl grumps when Adam Levine croons from the speaker.

"In the car of a forty year old soccer mom? Dream on." He’s probably listened to this Maroon 5 album more times than he can count on his runs, hums along to songs about broken girls with broken smiles. Daryl's fingers tap the beat against the steering wheel, fluttering light and easy, lips moving to the words. "You can sing if you wanna." Glenn grins when Daryl shoots him a poisonous look that loses some of its edge around his blush, as though embarrassed to be caught knowing a single note of what he undoubtedly calls sissy music. "I know you do, I’ll join you, c’mon." He wails the lyrics at the top of his lungs in the highest falsetto he can reach.

"Stop goddammit, y’were at a pitch only dogs can hear." Glenn laughs, loves Daryl’s reluctant little laugh of his own. "Ya want every walker from here t’Alabama on yer ass? You'll be loved then fer sure, as teriyaki Glenn."

Glenn leans back in his seat, satisfied. Daryl hums under his breath, and defiantly does not make eye contact. "We should raid an hmv, pick up movie soundtracks and I dunno, what do white people like? Metallica?"

"Zeppelin."

"Of course. How silly of me." Glenn impassively watches a lone geek stumble its way after them. There’s quiet between them, just Adam Levine’s voice and soft guitar. He misses his music. He misses planning his day around ipod playlists like sound tracks to his own life, he misses watching indie films alone in his shitty apartment, gorging on cheetos. And then there’s Daryl, as difficult to decipher as da Vinci’s journals, who acts as though there’s nothing and no one he misses about the old world. It makes him curious. "Well I’ve been whining about all the things I want, what about you?"

"Hm?" Daryl’s jaw clenches hard, a silent warning that he should drop the topic, his fingers stop their restless tapping.

"You must miss something. McDonalds or milk or hot water or playstations or--"

"Don’t matter if I can’t have it." Glenn watches him for a second at that, and Daryl blinks, watching the road resolutely. "No point torturin' myself, just t’ make conversation." He spits the words.

"But it’d help me understand you." Daryl looks sharply at him then, expression illegible, narrow eyes taking in his whole face, and Glenn’s certain his expression isn’t nearly as blank as Daryl’s, he’s certain he reads something in the twist of his mouth and the lines around his eyes. He turns back to the road with a humourless snort, as though to ask "why would you wanna do that?"

The answer is simple, in Glenn’s mind. Daryl is an indie film that Glenn’s watched over and over again, and every time the credits roll he has a new impression of the film, but he comes no closer to understanding.

He wants to get passed Daryl’s spines, to the fruit beneath.

They have a system when they scavenge in apartment buildings. Clear the lobby and the stair wells, start from the top and move down. They bang on the door of each apartment. If something growls and shuffles inside, they take it out and get what they need.

Glenn finds tomato soup, a hardened bag of brown sugar, a canister of cornmeal. Daryl scouts ahead through the rest of the apartment, whistles the all clear. There’s a pack of cigarettes sitting on the kitchen counter that Glenn pockets, photo albums scattered on the living room floor, an over turned case of cds and crushed plastic that Glenn sorts through in hopes of finding some Zeppelin. Daryl picks up odds and ends and sets them back down again, flipping through books, pocketing a romance novel or two.

"Fer the girls." Daryl says awkwardly when he catches Glenn looking, mouth pinched tight and blushing as though daring him to say something. Glenn ducks his head to laugh.

"On to the next." He says when they’ve scrounged up half a bag of rice and several cans of tea.

It’s a good, simple system. They should have guessed something would go wrong. There’s a message sprayed on the door of the next apartment, but the hallway window is busted, and the elements have gotten at it. The fact it's there should be warning enough. Daryl pounds on the door, listens to the scuffling inside, looks back at Glenn and nods.

They just don’t except the latch of the door to give, they don’t expect a family of five to burst through the open door, scraping scuffling noise amplified in the tight hallway. Glenn yells, swings wildly with his bat, so hard that half rotted limbs go flying, splattering blood up his arms. Maybe it feels a little good to kill things, to come out the stronger man. Daryl stabs each walker in the head with a bolt, smoothly drawing it back out.

"Shit." Glenn sighs. He swallows, steps over the festering corpses, and heads straight for the kitchen. All he gets for his troubles is a couple packets of Welch’s fruit snacks and dunkaroos. "Shit." He says with more feeling. Daryl looks like a war god returning from battle, fists still clenched and arms flexing beneath the weight of his cross bow. 

One room reveals a Polaroid, good condition save a few dings on the corner. He drapes its cord around his neck and considers the find a win among his meagre spoils.

"Ya smell that?" Daryl asks behind him, leaning against the door frame. Glenn sniffs at the air like a dog and gags. "Herd’s passin’ through this way. We need t’ get goin’, come back later."

"Yeah, okay."

That’s easier said than done. They duck in and among reeking dumpsters in empty alleyways and behind abandoned cars. A couple walkers take note of them, and Daryl picks them off one by one. Daryl gestures at the minivan, to make a dash for it while he covers the rear. Glenn nods, heart in his throat as he gets ready to run. More walkers are stumbling after them now in droves, growling and clacking their teeth together on jaws hinged by sinew. Glenn bolts, a couple walkers are shot down by Daryl. The cord of his Polaroid chooses that moment to snap as he runs, walkers over taking him, and stupidly, he stops to retrieve it. 

He doesn’t know why he needs it so bad, doesn’t know why it’s important to make memories in a godforsaken world. Daryl bellows at him like an animal, and Glenn leaps away from approaching walkers, right into the van. He barely gets the door shut before Daryl's careening away from grasping skeletal hands, tires screeching so loud every walkers’ eyes turn on them hungrily.

Daryl doesn’t drive in the direction of home, leading the horde on a different path so they’ll carry on in some other direction.  Then he swerves down back roads, fists tight on the wheel. Glenn’s come to realize, through long months in Daryl's company, that the more impassive he acts, the more emotion he feels, as though it overwhelms him  to the point that he has no idea what to do with himself, brooding in stony silence.

"You’re mad at me." Glenn broaches, fiddling with the Polaroid in his hands. Daryl’s short glance says no shit.

He’s silent though, until at last he snaps "The hell were ya thinkin'? Riskin' yer life fer some goddamn toy?" Glenn can’t explain, barely understands it himself. He shrugs, and Daryl’s so mad now his cheeks are red. "The hell d'ya think I woulda done, huh? Ya ask me t' watch yer back and then ya do somethin’ so stupid ya’d make jesus cry."

Glenn’s not listening. He just hears "the hell d'ya think I woulda done", hears the unabashed, unashamed care that Daryl displays, trembling with it, until he breathes and coils his impassive mask around himself again as though his outburst never was. Adam Levine’s falsetto does not ease the tension. Daryl gropes around his pockets, and finding his cigarette carton empty, snarls and throws it out the window.

"Here." Glenn whispers, and hands Daryl a cigarette. His fingers are shaking, dirt crusted beneath the chewed nails and torn skin and he’s never seen Daryl so angry, not even after Merle. 

_"The hell d'ya think I woulda done?"_ Glenn’s chest feels warm.

He tries out the Polaroid when they stop the car inside the gates. It’d be hilarious if the thing broke after he risked his neck for it, funnier still if it hadn’t worked to begin with. Daryl is propped against the side of the minivan, puffing his third cigarette, setting sun painting him red as Aries, though the black blood certainly helps. He catches Glenn looking at him through the view finder and puts up his middle finger as the flash goes off.

Glenn shakes out the little square picture, watches the colours appear. Daryl, surly and brooding, looks out at him behind his hand, shrouded in a cloud of smoke, backlit by the red sun. He likes it. "You in a nutshell." He chuckles.

"Whatcha takin’ pictures o’ me fer? Burn it."

"Nah." Glenn laughs louder, tucks the photo somewhere safe. "This is the closest thing I have to instagram now."

He bothers everyone with the Polaroid camera, and sticks each photo in a growing collage on his wall, his entire rag tag family summed up in a couple square inches; Rick pointing out something to Carl through a rifle scope, Hershel inspecting soil in a little spade, Carol draping sheets over the clothes line, Daryl skinning a couple squirrels, Maggie sleeping, Beth rocking Judith and singing distractedly, Michonne pressed to Daryl’s back as they straddle his bike. He wakes up every morning to the pictures and smiles, loves to see his family like this, content, in their element. He calls it snap shots from the apocalypse.

And if he has more pictures of Daryl than anyone else, he will say it’s because there are too many facets of Daryl for him to be summed up in a single picture, even if that one of him flipping the bird came pretty close.

Michonne is reading a battered book of contemporary poetry in the common room, sword held across her lap, fingers curled around its dingy white sheathe. "Anything good in that?" Glenn asks, after he’s paused to snap a picture of her.

"Sure. If you like pretentious drivel." She says drolly, smiles a bit, reaches behind her for her cooled bowl of oatmeal.

"I live for pretentious drivel." Glenn returns with a smile of his own. He finds himself a bowl and a can opener, studying the array of cans for breakfast

"Either way, it’s better than the novels you brought back." A soft snort in reply tells Glenn she’s not talking to him, and he turns, can of corn in one hand, to look at Daryl who is leaning against the far wall, fingering an unlit cigarette.

"Ya read both them romance novels in a single night." Daryl retorts softly. Glenn wants to take a picture of this, sly smile playing at the corners of Daryl’s mouth, playfulness twinkling in Michonne’s eye. Maybe Daryl can see his intent, because he jerks his chin in Glenn’s direction, says "Don’t ya get any ideas with that toy o’ yers."

"Wouldn’t dream of it." Glenn replies, opening the can and taking a seat beside Michonne, peering over her shoulder at poetry about vicious lovers and considering the numbers glaring through the darkness at three am and wishing the same sleeplessness on people two time zones away. "This is pretentious drivel." Glenn says.

But it’s not like he can’t relate. Because sometimes he lights a candle and stares at the bumps and ridges of Daryl’s gore covered hands and wonders if Daryl lies awake wanting the way he wants.  "I like it."

"Knock yourself out." Michonne drawls, sliding the book across the table at him. Glenn flips through it with one hand as he eats breakfast with the other. Daryl keeps himself busy, hands always moving, fluttering with deceptively delicate movements Glenn watches from the corner of his eye, lips wrapped around his spoon and fingers dog earring pages with poems he particularly likes.

He finds paper and tape and sharpies, copies out lines he likes, taping them into his growing collage, along with the new picture of Michonne. No one finds his new decorations all that weird. Beth's cell is an eclectic jumble of artifacts taken for aesthetic value; Carl's the den of a burgeoning geek, his walls plastered with posters cut from comic books and stolen from decimated Walmarts. Rick’s is a mess of babies’ toys and old farmers’ almanacs taken from supermarket raids. 

Daryl’s cell, on the other hand, holds no remnants of the old world. He has pine boughs tucked into the ledge above the door because they smell good, pretty rocks and animal teeth lay in a comprehensive collection like a natural history museum, along with flowers pressed for him by Carol and the soft pelt of a young rabbit that Glenn sometimes sees Daryl petting absently, thick rough fingers running through fine fur. He has a half finished collection of different birds feathers taped to construction paper, neatly labeled in Carol's cursive, since Daryl's chicken scratch would be illegible, even to himself.

"Why didn’t you save the feathers of that owl?" Glenn asks as he runs his fingers over soft feathers, some still tacky with blood. Daryl looks up from his crossbow, rubs his chin, smearing blackened grease there.

"Some Indian tribes believed owls were harbingers o' death an' bad luck, so they never used their feathers in any o' their head dresses an’ that." He jerks his chin at the strange little museum piece. "I ain’t takin’ any chances."

Glenn nods slowly, wonders where precisely Daryl picked up that little tidbit. "I’m here for a reason anyway. Here." He reaches into his bag. He brings Daryl a broken geode, its outside rough and ugly, the inside sparkling like the universe and all the stars.

"S'quartz." Daryl says, studying the rock. "S'real common. Y'know amethyst? S'a type o’ quartz." And maybe Glenn knew that once, in the days of Google searches and wiki articles.

"You wanna keep it?" Glenn offers when Daryl sets the geode on the bed between them. Daryl shrugs, which is as good as saying yes. But Glenn picks up the geode anyway, peers into its almost limitless recesses to see the dull crystals inside. Daryl is like a geode, ugly on the outside, bland and undesirable. When at last pieces of him have been cut away, he reveals an entire universe, just waiting to be explored, polished, understood.

Daryl sits quiet on his bunk, flicking between observing Glenn and studying his fingers as they pluck at loose fibers of his blankets and the holes in his threadbare jeans. He settles on just watching Glenn, gaze as discerning as any predator until at last he sighs, "Wha’ d'ya want from me?"

"What?" Glenn blanches, face open and wide with confusion, because that’s a loaded question, and Daryl steels his shoulders and clenches his jaw like he’s expecting a heavy answer, like he’s expecting to take a beating.

"The way ya been actin’, tiptoein’ around. Wha’ d’ya want from me? Cause I’m sick o’--" he bites his lip and looks away, and Glenn will never know what Daryl’s sick of. Will never know if it was his following eyes or his heart felt sighs, or the way his palms itched to touch that finally gave him away. "Wha’ d’ya want from me?" He repeats.

What a question that is. Glenn wants to visually dissect every frame of Daryl’s cinematography, categorize each of his gestures. He wants to smash the shell of Daryl's geode open to find sharp sparkling quartz inside, to read his secret thoughts as easily as he reads a clock. He wants to burn away all Daryl's barbs and spines, leaving behind the prickly pear, to be handled and devoured with care. He wants every atom of Daryl.

He doesn’t think waxing poetic like that would go over well.

"Nothing, if you don’t want to give."

"S'not what I asked." His eyes are fierce now, burning through his skull, and Glenn shrugs awkwardly, pinned like a butterfly to a board.

Glenn looks to the geode in his hands, manages to choke out, "You’re like a geode to me. You’ve got secrets inside that I want to understand. I want to understand you."

"Christ, kid, what fer?" Daryl sighs roughly, shooing Glenn off his bunk. Glenn does not explain that geodes hide treasure, indie films hide nuggets of wisdom, and prickly pears hide the sweet fruit of the desert, and that he enjoys collecting those little secrets of the universe. He leaves the geode with Daryl’s other rocks as he exits the cell.

In retrospect, perhaps the geode metaphor wasn’t such a good idea. Perhaps longing to crack Daryl open and inspect his insides until he learns how to make him yield, is not the best image to leave Daryl with. But Daryl makes no mention or outward notion of it. Daryl looks at Glenn the same way he always has, a wolf's eyes in the skull of a human being, animal features trapped in the cage of Daryl’s skin. But those feral, hungry looks are gone as quickly as they come, leaving Glenn staring at Daryl’s infuriatingly impassive mask with an urge to rip it from him like the barbs of a cactus.

He follows Daryl as he strides across the yard. "Want company?" Glenn offers, tucking a knife into his belt and checking the edge if his machete. Daryl grunts, and that serves as answer enough as he treks out into the forest in mid afternoon dreary late autumn sunlight. Glenn steps as quiet as he can, but still manages to make noise. Daryl meanwhile might as well be barefoot, silent as a predator. Daryl is at his most beautiful on the hunt, comfortable, stable, all the tension easing from him so he is nothing but the scents carried to him by a down wind, the heated sinew of his own muscles, the scuttling scurry of lesser creatures while he is king of the jungle--

"Stop it!" Daryl growls, rounding on Glenn so suddenly he stumbles back a couple of steps.

"Stop what?"

"Stop starin’! I can feel ya lookin’ at me like--" he stops, as though he can’t quite come up with an image that truly describes just how Glenn was looking at him. Glenn considers this a good thing. Daryl points one accusatory finger at him, driving his point home. "Either cut it out or get." Glenn raises his right hand in a scouts honour salute, and Daryl huffs and grumbles. "Supposed t’ be watchin' my back, not chasin' tail."

The forest is quiet again. Daryl slides back into hunter mode and Glenn forces himself to watch the trees, bare as they are, for signs of walkers or bears or whatever else. As they walk, snowflakes flutter down like powdered sugar. They catch on Daryl’s leather jacket, stark and white, before melting, tangling in his hair to leave him frosted looking. Glenn laughs a little when they catch on his eyelashes. Georgian winters are nothing compared to Michigan.

Straightening, Daryl sighs, shoots him a surly look that immediately wipes the grin from Glenn’s face. "Ya ain’t takin’ this seriously, so let’s just head back--" 

"Daryl, look!"

He follows Glenn’s finger as he points to a buck, and pleased with him, ruffles his hair, before crouching to line up a shot through the trees. Glenn tries to school the delighted look from his face, tries not to savour the rough brush of Daryl’s fingers. The buck goes down like a felled tree. Glenn watches for walkers while Daryl field dresses the deer until at last he slings the thing over his shoulders, the god of the hunt with a kill, like a pagan drawing, and jerks his head in the direction of home.

"Yer starin’ again." He says gruffly, shifting the weight of the deer on his shoulders. Glenn shrugs and grins, Daryl’s hands are full so he can’t hit him for being cheeky.

"Got nothing better to look at." Maybe he shouldn’t have said that, but Daryl's lips thin, his neck goes red, almost glowing in the cold washed out white of the scenery around them, and looks away, trudging on.

Sometimes, just when Glenn thinks he understands the meat and potatoes of Daryl, just when he thinks he can quantify the timbre of his voice and the vice grip of his fingers, he throws him for a loop. It has been freezing rain all afternoon and from the guard tower there is not much to be seen. Walkers move sluggishly through the mire and thin ice and freezing cold. 

Daryl comes to find him with two cans he pries open with his knife. He hands Glenn the last can of fruit cocktail and a spoon, setting into his own baked beans quietly. They eat in silence, and Glenn studies the melted sleet on Daryl’s eyelashes, the drop lets that cling to his hair, turning it dark. He studies Daryl’s slow, unhurried blinks, as patient and still as a sated lion. At last, Daryl turns to him quiet and considering, and sets down his can.

He plucks Glenn's can from his fingers, rolls up onto his knees before Glenn, hands warm and damp on his legs. "Wha--" Daryl’s sharp look shuts his mouth in a hurry. Daryl’s hands stroke up his thighs, stilted and awkward, and Glenn squirms beneath his touch, until stiff fingers pop the button of his pants, drawing down his fly. Daryl watches his hands with single minded determination, drawing out Glenn’s cock, already half hard, already interested in the idea of Daryl like this, on his knees, licking his lips, stroking so light that his calluses cause the most delightful rasp of friction so that Glenn has to hold his breath, try not to moan stupidly into the chill air turned humid between them. "Christ." Glenn breathes out at Daryl’s first experimental stroke of his cock.

Daryl glances up at him only once. The back of his neck is flushed red. Then he dips his head, takes Glenn’s cock as deep as it will go. His mouth is sloppy wet perfect heat, ragged breathing and soft noises half muffled by Glenn’s cock in his mouth. His hands grip Glenn’s knees to keep them spread and pinned while he squirms in his chair, wanting more, deeper, harder. If his head were clear, perhaps Daryl's inexperience would be glaringly obvious in the way he swallows around his cock, sometimes takes him a little deeper than he can manage, hasn’t quite mastered the trick of finding a rhythm, hollowing his cheeks just so. He sucks messily, pressure and wet working tongue, and Glenn wants to bury his fingers in Daryl’s hair and slide in, slide all the way home, let Daryl know just what he’d be getting if Glenn ever had the time and patience and permission to bend him over and work him good.

As it stands his hands grip the arms of his chair, his back arches off the seat, his toes curl in his boots, and its glancing down at Daryl’s pink lips stretched around his cock, tongue working the underside, chin a slick mess of saliva, that’s finally his undoing. "Holy fucking shit." Glenn gasps, and cums, daringly touching Daryl's face, tracing his thumbs those perfect wet pink lips. 

He tells himself he is not disappointed Daryl spits his cum out.

"Why'd you--?"

Daryl shrugs, wipes the spit from around his mouth. "Seemed like somethin’ I oughta do." But that’s hardly an answer.

"Holy shit that was good." Glenn says, feeling vapid and sated. He wonders if sucking him off turned Daryl on, but his jeans are too loose to tell. He wonders if Daryl would let him blow him, if Daryl would lean up against the glass and let Glenn suck him until he cried and came. "You want--" he tries, by Daryl is rolling off his knees, gathering their trash.

"Hope yer satisfied." He tosses over his shoulder as he steps out onto the railing of the watch tower, a cold blast of air and a spray of sleet following him in. Glenn doesn’t bother explaining that he could have a million years with Daryl, a million blow jobs, and million conversations, and he still wouldn’t be satisfied.

"The hell do you think you’re going?" Glenn jerks him back by the hem of his poncho. Maybe Daryl wants him to drag him back, if he didn’t Glenn certainly couldn’t have managed it. There’s that efficiency of all his gestures, in the way he ducks his head and looks away, closing the door behind him. "You were gonna suck me and dump me?"

"Ya got what ya wanted." Daryl returns gruffly, jaw setting. 

"What I wanted?" Glenn repeats incredulously, and he doesn’t mean to let his voice pitch up so high. He snorts derisively. "You think that’s all I want? I could waste the whole day, listing off all the bits of you--" I want  to kiss, Glenn thinks, and breathes out hard through his nose. Daryl is looking anywhere but Glenn, skin flushed and burning, almost as though there’s more shame in having to talk about the events than in the doing them. "Why would you think I wanted you to...?" He trails off, wiggles his fingers in a general gesture.

Daryl shrugs. He just knew. Could tell from the way Glenn watches him, the way Glenn angles closer when they talk, the way Glenn blinks, breathes, sleeps. He can read it, and it’s not as though he was being all that subtle. "Didn’t ya--?" He starts unsurely, fists tangling in the hem of his poncho.

"I wanted it." Glenn hurriedly assures. "But that doesn’t explain why you did it."

"Mighta wanted to." Glenn sucks in a quick breath, suddenly lightheaded with a rush of joy and want, while Daryl dares to make eye contact. Maybe what he sees on Glenn’s face just then is terrifying, because Glenn feels full of adoration, wants to pull Daryl closer, close as he can get despite cactus barbs pricking his skin and worship him all over, show him his want is returned. Maybe that’s too much for Daryl, because he turns and flees, hurrying away across the yard, the door still open, wind spraying rain into the tower. Glenn doesn’t care. He almost wants to chase after him.

_"Mighta wanted to."_ Glenn swallows. _“Mighta wanted to.”_

Carol sits in the common room with a pile of jeans that have all worn thin at the knees and crotch, patching them with old inmates uniforms found in the dilapidated laundry room. She looks up at Glenn when he sighs empathetically and purses her lips. "Well, spit it out." She says, and inspects the worn fabric of a pair of Michonne's skinny jeans. Technically it’s cheating, to ask for advice from Daryl’s best friend, but Glenn is at a loss, and Carol has a way of making Daryl make sense.

"How do you understand someone, if they don’t want to be understood?" Carol pauses her stitching and looks at Glenn, really looks at him in the same way Daryl does, reading a million things in the joints of his fingers or the tangle of his eyelashes, reading more than Glenn could ever hope to say. "How do you get them to just--?" He wants to spill it all at Carol's feet: he wants Daryl’s heart and legs to part for him like the red sea, he wants to make a constellation of him, he wants to devour him. All his emotions writhe about like the tangled snakes of Medusa's hair, treacherous, poisonous, and almost violent so that he doesn’t know what to do with himself, or what to make of this beast that hungers inside him.

"The thing about people is that no one is identical." Carol says carefully. Maybe she read the hunger, maybe she peered in at the beast. "You can’t hope to fully understand everything about someone, you can’t emotionally connect on every level, and that’s the way it should be." Finished with Michonne’s jeans, she moves on to Carl’s, letting out the hem. "Besides, discovering someone else’s mysteries is half the fun.” Glenn nods slowly. "But to answer your question, generally people start with talking." She smiles secretively, a little twist of her mouth. "Daryl's out at the fences. Run along now." She jerks her head at the door, and turns whole heartedly back to her sewing.

Glenn is stupid enough not to bring anything heavier than a thick university sweater to check the fences. It was fine earlier when the temperature tripped above freezing, but it drops again and starts to snow. His fingers are glowing red and numb around his crow bar as he jams it through the fences into walker mouths and eye sockets. Daryl is a length from him, using his knife. 

Carol has taught herself to knit, and he's wearing her gift to him, a thick bright rainbow coloured hat. It has an ugly, misshapen pompom on the top. His was the first hat she attempted, and it’s a bit too big for Daryl’s head, so that he has to roll up the brim. Snowflakes catch on the wool, and Glenn thinks he looks like a boy. He looked like a boy when he first tried it on, smiling shyly at Carol in thanks.

Daryl does not look in his direction, systematically destroying one walker after another.

Glenn shivers with cold, sweater soaked through, and curses himself. He doesn’t know how to approach Daryl; he’s stuck out here in the cold until he can work up the courage to say something, to drag all this out into the light. He shivers again, teeth clacking. Boots crunch in the snow beside him, and Daryl plops his misshapen hat on Glenn’s head, still warm from his body heat. He adjusts it, and looks at Daryl in question, but he’s already moved away again. Maybe the gesture should be a clear sign of affection, but like an indie movie, Glenn wonders if one scene doesn’t in fact mean something entirely different, he’s just missing the key to deciphering it.

Honestly, it’s getting to be so frustrating, staring at Daryl’s retreating back and hearing “mighta wanted to” in the back of his head on repeat, but coming no closer to understanding him. Glenn wants to scream. Instead he charges after Daryl, footsteps nowhere near as quiet. "Hey!" He shouts, and hisses a venomous "shut up" as the walkers nearby growl in response. Daryl blinks ponderously at him. "Don’t gimme that innocent look. You’d better be straight with me, cause I’m sick and tired of replaying all our conversations in my head and wondering if you like me, or if you like like me, or if you’re just playing a joke."

Daryl snorts, doesn’t look near as threatened and cornered as Glenn expects and it makes him want to throttle him a little bit, grab him by the shoulders and shake until he realizes he wants them to spend long hours making out like teenagers. Or maybe, Daryl just can’t take him seriously when he’s wearing an oversized rainbow coloured pompom hat. "The hell chinaman? That’s my line."

Glenn narrows his eyes at him. "Daryl Dixon, you are the king of mixed signals and the patron saint of prickly pears." He dares rest his hand against Daryl’s chest, doesn’t take caution against cactus barbs. Daryl glances down at his hand then back towards him. "I want to kiss you. Right here. So either you’re going to let me cause you wanna, or you’re not cause you don’t. And that'll fucking settle that."

Daryl flushes, and through the leather jacket Glenn can feel Daryl’s heat and the frantic thud of his heart. It’s comforting a little. Glenn leans forward enough to press their lips together, and Daryl lets him. It’s warm and chaste, even as Daryl tips his head forward and sighs into it, like he does on his last cigarettes, like it’s all he needs, and maybe Glenn would like very much to be just like nicotine to Daryl. He presses harder, finds Daryl’s lips pliant and willing, and a bubble bursts in his chest.

"That was nice." Daryl murmurs when they part, and Glenn grins at him. "But ya still haven’t explained what a prickly pear is."

Glenn shrugs, it doesn’t matter now. Glenn’s already burned off all Daryl’s barbs.

**Author's Note:**

> okay so hipster!Glenn makes me happy, his polaroid camera makes me happy, and seriously graphic and intense metaphors make me happy.


End file.
